This week’s 31 Thoughts podcast was an Edmonton Oilers-Themed one and I’m going to try and transcribe the best parts of it for you here with my comments. This could be a long read, so you might want to grab a coffee, tea, beer, two-four of your favorite hard alcohol and buckle up!
EF=Elliotte Friedman
JM=Jeff Marek
Part Two is here.
How Much Damage Has Been Done?
EF: Why did they do this (fire Chiarelli) now? Fans were voting with their wallets. There were empty seats. I’ve been somebody who studies the secondary ticket market, I’m very interested in this kind of thing. Value was way down. Your season ticket renewals are going out, your 3-year luxury suite rentals/leases are up. They were going to lose all that.
That’s why this decision was made now.
I have a hard time believing this one. As I’ve said many times before, every time I got home to watch a game, I always use the secondary ticket market and I never pay over $50 to watch the Oilers. Just because Friedman is noticing it now doesn’t mean it hasn’t been there the whole time.
I can’t speak to the luxury suites. As far as I understand a lot of those expensive seats, boxes, or what have you are owned by local corporations who use them as tax write-offs anyhow. So no skin off their backs.
JM: The Oilers have been on the wrong end of both the draft and trades over the past four years.
EF: No, no, no, no. I would hesitate to give up on Yamamoto and Puljujarvi. One of the things that’s being lost in sports, in general, is patience. I don’t want to say that both those guys are wastes or failures yet. I think that there is still time for both those players.
Don’t forget that Yamamoto was a later pick. Those guys generally take time.
Marek goes on to say that’s not what was intended by the question. I think he was pointing at the Reinhart deal and he’s not wrong but from a general drafting and development POV, the Oilers are MUCH better off now than they were before Chiarelli arrived.
JM: As much as Edmonton has re-stocked, whether it’s Jones, whether it’s Bouchard, Whether it’s Benson, Whether it’s Yamamoto, there is something there that you can see.
They do go into the Reinhart deal briefly and Marek wonders if that one is on Chiarelli whereas Friedman says, it doesn’t matter. I’m paraphrasing to save time here, Chiarelli was paid to be the boss, he wears the good with the bad.
What Concerns Friedman About Nicholson’s Presser from an Oilers fan’s POV
EF: Nicholson said we can still make the playoffs, “we’re a playoff team” and while everybody always wants to be that team, I just wonder what it means because there’re certainly not trending that way.
I don’t think Nicholson could’ve gone another way here. Especially after what McDavid said about belief in the dressing room. I also don’t believe it’s the right message to convey to the team or the fanbase before seeing what can be done at the deadline.
How are they going to be able to change that? They said Ken Hitchcock is the coach for the rest of the season. What does that mean in terms of their decision making? That’s going to be a big question.
Friedman on the Oilers Wasting 97’s Prime Years
EF: I read a lot of stuff, “Oh, they’ve wasted his prime years.”
He’s got a long time. They have to fix it, he’s going to be a great player for a long time. And the thing I like most about McDavid is, that guy, he’s a professional. He hasn’t complained, he doesn’t complain on the ice to the referees, we talked last week that that now might be to his detriment. He goes out every day and he does his job and that quote he made the other day about how “If you don’t believe in this group and you’re in the locker room, then you need to leave.”
I heard he told the players the same thing before he told the public when they had their dressing room conversation.
It’s weird we never heard stuff like this about Hall or Yakupov or Eberle or Schultz, right?
Going Forward… The Return of an Ex-Employee?
EF: I think there’s going to be some major surgery that needs to be done but I always believe you have a chance (with McDavid on your team). I’m going to tell you something else, You know what I’m doing if I’m the Oilers? You know who I’m going to talk to? I’m going to talk to Tyler Dellow.
I’m bringing him back.
I think Tyler does really good work and I think an NHL team is going to hire him. And if I’m the Edmonton Oilers I want that to be me. They’re his team, they’re the team he’s most passionate about. You can always talk to somebody and say, “Tyler, there’s a way we’re going to conduct our business and you are going to fit in with the way I need you to be but to me, you can say whatever you want and I want all your information.” Because I think that guy is going to help a hockey team and if I’m the Edmonton Oilers, I want that to be me.
JM: Who makes that decision? Is that the GM or above the GM? I don’t disagree with you. I’ve known Tyler for a lot of years.
EF: Front offices are changing. This league is changing.
Woof! Good luck with this one. Dellow rubbed a lot of people wrong in Edmonton and burnt some serious bridges I believe but maybe now that Chiarelli is gone, there’s a minuscule possibility of a return. I mean if Dave Keon can return to the Maple Leafs, surely Dellow could go back to Edmonton.
I heard The Athletic is paying him a shit ton of money though. Reckon Edmonton could beat that and give him parameters to work within?
Are the Oilers One of them?
EF: These teams are growing. When I was in Vegas, it was obvious to me that some of these clubs have quietly hired more people than they let on.
JM: Is Edmonton one of them?
EF: No. Edmonton I think is behind.
JM: Which is interesting because a lot of this “analytics movement” started with people like Vic Ferrari around the Edmonton Oilers.
EF: Yes. The Oilers have always had an interesting, for lack of a better term, cult of analytics fans (laughter ensues). Sorry guys. It’s just a word I use.
But you have to have that now. You have to have people who think differently and again, you could have a conversation with someone and say, “This is how I need you to be around the players. This is how I need you to be around certain people in the organization but at the end of the day, you can say to me whatever you want and I may listen, I may not, but I want to hear what you have to say.”
Like, what was the no.1 thing Bob Nicholson talked about in his press conference, “We need to do a better job of evaluating players.”
JM: And let them season in the AHL. Which is pretty much him saying Yamamoto get used to Bakersfield and you too Puljujarvi.
EF: I wonder about that and I think that’s the right message but they said they’ve got to do a better job of evaluating.
JM: Is that a thinly veiled way of saying, “We can’t just rely on, Hey we’re good hockey men, we rely on these eyeballs.”
EF: I don’t think anybody can do that anymore.
I’ve got ZERO problems with the Oilers bringing in more personnel to increase the quality of decisions being made.
But if I were the Oilers, I’d just take a look at some of the Twitter timelines of the analytics influencers who cover the Oilers or the Maple Leafs, for example, and ask myself, “Is that the kind of person I want representing my club? Do I want that kind of immaturity penetrating my hockey team?”
While the work being done by those people could have value, does the character of those individuals coincide with our how an NHL team wants to be represented?
Analytics vs. the Eye Test
EF: To me, the fight’s over. I hate it when I see on Twitter, I hate hearing it anywhere. To me, it’s all about building the best organization and if they don’t want to bring Tyler back, I might call Sunny Mehta.
I think the fight could be over if folks could just drop the egos (or leave social media). There’s a pretty good reason why there’s bitterness between the two tribes and if I recall correctly, the aforementioned Tyler Dellow has been at the center of it.
We’re only 15 minutes into the podcast now. Coming up you’ll hear what Marek and Friedman think the Oilers should do going forward.
You can head over to Sportsnet.ca and check out the podcast if you want to but I’ll be doing up a part two with my comments later.
